by
Damien F.
Mackey
Now, turning to geographical considerations, “eastward” and
“plain of Shinar”, there may be
a pressing need to shift the conventional goal posts. And
that is exactly what Anne Habermehl has done in
her ground-breaking article, “Where in the World Is the Tower of Babel?”
Language of Babel
This heading is not so much
concerned about the language, or languages, spoken at ancient Babel, as about a
re-consideration of the meaning of the words/phrases particularly of verse 1: “whole
world”; “eastward”; “plain of Shinar”.
Here, as in the Pentecost event of
Acts 2, translations might superficially convey the impression of a global
event, “whole world” (Genesis 11:1), to be compared with Acts 2:5’s “every nation
under heaven”. A pairing of Babel with Pentecost is relevant insofar as the
disastrous confusion of languages in the case of the former, owing to the sin
of pride (Genesis 11:4, 7-9), is Divinely undone by the miraculous phenomenon
of “tongues” at Pentecost (Acts 7:11): “… we hear them declaring the wonders of
God in our own tongues!”
With the benefit of such a
comparison it may be suggested that the confusion of languages was, just as was
the Flood, only “local in geographic extent” (for full quote, read on further).
The different and contemporaneous
Sumerian and Akkadian languages may have been a result.
Matt Lynch, however, has a somewhat different
take on Babel and Pentecost (2016):
Pentecost — A Reversal of Babel?
Once,
when I was teaching a church class, two people started speaking to each other
in German. It made things easier for them because it was their native
language. But it didn’t make things easier for Margaret (name
changed). With deep frustration she exclaimed, ‘Can we just speak English
here!’
The
experience of linguistic diversity leads many to wish for unity—or rather,
homogeneity. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone just spoke normal (i.e., English)?
That desire for intelligibility is understandable, but the desire for
that language to be English can also betray ethnocentrism. Especially from
where I come in the U.S., which has no national language, the fight to retain
English can easily slide into a fear-driven attempt to keep ‘our’ culture and
‘our’ language dominant.
Confusion
over Babel
Yesterday
the church celebrated its founding linguistic event—Pentecost—an event that
many hail as the definitive reversal of Babel. Whereas at Babel, God confused
languages, at Pentecost, God brought people of all languages together and
united them. At Babel tongues were confused. At Pentecost, tongues were
understood. You get the idea.
However,
Pentecost may not be anti-Babel in the way some suppose. For starters, the
reversal idea assumes that a unified language was a good idea gone wrong, and
that eschatological unity would somehow involve a return to one language—a Spirit language.
But
Genesis never states that the confusion of languages was a bad thing. The only
downside was for the Babelites, who couldn’t finish their Manhattan project. On
the positive side, language diversification enabled humanity to get on with the
task of ‘filling the earth,’ something they were meant to do but didn’t because
of their big hero project. Notice the language in Gen 11:4:
Come,
let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let
us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be
scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
God had
wanted humans to ‘fill the earth’ (Gen
1). Babel was in direct contravention of God’s intended vision of teeming
diversity.
At
Pentecost, God embraces language diversity. He doesn’t destroy it. So yes, the
Spirit reverses the imperial
unification of Babylon, but not the multiplication of languages.
Empires and
Language
To
see why the preservation of multiplication is important, it’s important to
grasp the imperial function of language unification. Joel Green helps us here:
The
wickedness of this idolatrous plan [to build Babel] is betrayed in the opening
of the Babel story, with its reference to ‘one language’—a metaphor in the ancient
Near East for the subjugation and assimilation of conquered peoples by a
dominant nation. Linguistic domination is a potent weapon in the imperial
arsenal, as people of Luke’s world themselves would have known, living as they
did in the wake of the conquest of ‘the world’ by Alexander the Great and the
subsequent creation of a single, Greek-speaking linguistic community.[1]
By
confusing languages God was merciful, not punitive. He already recognized that
‘this is only the beginning of what they will do’ (11:6). Who knows what WMDs
the Babelites would’ve created? Middleton writes, ‘Babel thus represents a
regressive human attempt to guarantee security by settling in one place and
constructing a monolithic empire, with a single language, thus resisting God’s
original intent for humanity.’[2]
So God
gave humanity a push toward its original purpose, to fill the world, cultivate
it, build cultures, and grow. Linguistic diversity is a natural outgrowth of
this process, and one which the Spirit rubber stamps at Pentecost.
Israel
& the Nations
But
before we land on Pentecost, it’s important to look at a few snapshots of Israel’s
‘universal’ vision in Isaiah:
In days
to come the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established as the highest of
the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to
it. … For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from
Jerusalem. (Isa 2:2-3)
I am
coming to gather all nations and tongues;
and they shall come and shall see my glory… And I will also take some of them
as priests and as Levites, says the LORD. … From new moon to new moon, and from
Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, says the LORD.
(Isa 66:18, 21, 23)
In the
first vision, the nations come to receive instruction from Israel. In the
second, they come to worship, and some even becomes priests. They come as nations,
with all their diversity of languages (‘nations and tongues’). And, they retain
their identity as nations. They neither dissolve into one gigantic Israelite
world empire nor isolate themselves completely.
Israel’s
worship system includes foreigners
and receives the nations’ offerings, while the nations receive teaching from
Israel.
Pentecost—Preservation
and Unification
When we
turn to Pentecost, we see that the Spirit is similarly uninterested in unifying
language: ‘Jews … from every nation under heaven … each one heard them speaking
in the native language of each’ (Acts 2:5-6).
Things
were getting out of hand, so Peter stood up to interpret the event. He did so
by drawing on Joel 2, which anticipated a work of the Spirit that obliterated a
different sort of division. Here’s Peter quoting from Joel 2:28-29:
In the
last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will
prophesy, your young men will
see visions, your old men will
dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy. (Acts 2:17-18)
The
point couldn’t be clearer—the Spirit gave without regard for status, sex, or
nationality. In giving, the Spirit unified the people of God (‘tearing down the
dividing wall of hostility’ Eph 2:14), but in a way that preserved their
cultural diversity. One
Spirit, many gifts. One Spirit, many languages. The Spirit
doesn’t negate difference, but cultivates and leverages that difference in
service of God’s mission toward all nations.
So yes,
Pentecost reverses the homogeneity of Babel. And yes, Pentecost reverses any
hostility that may have arisen
in the wake of linguistic confusion. Yet, the Spirit puts the diversity of
cultures (preserved in their languages) on display and empowers each for the
proclamation of a de-centered Good News. This was a profoundly anti-imperial
move. The point isn’t that the Spirit speaks one language. Instead, the
Spirit speaks your language—no
matter who you are. ....
Returning now to the subject of
geographical extent, for the Flood, for Babel, Rich Deem has written of “The
Genesis Flood Why the Bible Says It Must be Local”:
“Psalm 104 directly eliminates any
possibility of the flood being global (see Psalm 104-9 - Does it refer to the Original Creation or
the Flood?). In order to accept a global flood, you must reject
Psalm 104 and the inerrancy of the Bible. If you like to solve mysteries on
your own, you might want to read the flood account first and find the biblical
basis for a local flood.
The Bible's other creation passages eliminate the possibility of
a global flood
The concept of a global Genesis
flood can be easily eliminated from a plain reading of Psalm 104,1 which is known as the "creation
psalm." …. The verse that eliminates a global flood follows: "You set
a boundary they [the waters] cannot cross; never again will they cover the
earth." (Psalm 104:9)1 Obviously, if the waters never again
covered the earth, then the flood must have been local. Psalm 104 is just one
of several creation passages that indicate that God prevented the seas from
covering the entire earth.2 An integration of all flood and
creation passages clearly indicates that the Genesis flood was local in
geographic extent”.
Now, turning to geographico-linguistic
considerations re Babel, “eastward” and “plain of Shinar”, there may be a
pressing need to shift the conventional goal posts. And that is exactly what Anne Habermehl has done in
her ground-breaking article, “Where in the World Is the Tower of Babel?” (https://answersingenesis.org/tower-of-babel/where-in-the-world-is-the-tower-of-babel/), there shifting the geographical
focus for the Tower of Babel incident away from southern Iraq (ancient
“Sumer”), the customary “Cradle of Civilisation”, to the Khabur region of NE
Syria. According to this new view, the biblical “land of Shinar” to whose
“plain” men migrated after the Flood (Genesis 11:2), and thought to indicate
“Sumer”, is roughly to be identified, instead, as the region of Sinjar (the
scene of much fighting in our era).
This is how Anne Habermehl has introduced (summarised) her article:
Abstract
The biblical story of the Tower of Babel is believed by
many to be the record of a real historical event that took place after the
worldwide Flood, at a time when the earth’s population still lived together in
one place. The enduring archaeological question, therefore, is where the Tower
of Babel was built. It is widely considered that Shinar, where the Bible says
the Babel event took place, was a territory in south Mesopotamia; and that
Babel was located at Babylon. However, an analysis of history, geography, and
geology, shows that Shinar cannot have been in the south, but rather was a
territory in what is northeastern Syria today; and that the remnants of the
Tower must be located in the Upper Khabur River triangle, not far from Tell
Brak, which is the missing city of Akkad.
An immediate point in Habermehl’s favour is that she has been able to, in
her scholarly and well-researched article, provide a fairly compelling
identification (namely, Tell Brak) for the lost city of Akkad (Accad), Nimrod’s
city (Genesis 10:10), so famous in ancient times, but not identified even to
this day.
Akkad is generally estimated to have been situated in the environs of
modern Baghdad.
As to the word, “eastward”, one may have to ask,
“eastward” from where?
Various translations of the word,
the Hebrew miqqedem (מִקֶּדֶם), are
“from the east”, “in the east”. The Ark survivors were last heard of “on the
mountains of Ararat [Urartu]”, which is already close to the eastern
extremities of the ancient world. It is unlikely that preserved humanity
travelled even further “eastwards” (or its variants) than this in search of
fertile habitable land.
Hebrew miqqedem also has the
meaning “of old [long ago”], which makes more sense to me.
Further,
regarding the location of the Tower of Babel, the Septuagint (LXX) Isaiah
provides a geographical clue which, whilst conforming with Habermehl’s
location of biblical “Shinar”, would not, however, support a conventional
location of the land as Sumer, nor anywhere further “eastward”. In Ellicott's Commentary for
English Readers we read this intriguing information,
regarding Isaiah 10:9: “Is not Calno [Calneh] as Carchemish? is not Hamath as
Arpad? is not Samaria as Damascus?” (“... instead
of naming Carchemish, gives “Calanè, where the tower [ὁ πύργος] was built ...”):
“…. Is not Calno as Carchemish?—The
six names obviously pointed to more recent conquests in which Sargon and his
predecessors had exulted. One after another they had fallen. Could Judah hope
to escape? (1) Calno, the Calneh of Genesis 10:10, Amos 6:2. That prophet had held up its fate
in vain as a warning to Samaria. …. The LXX. version, which instead of naming
Carchemish, gives “Calanè, where the tower [ὁ πύργος] was built,” seems to imply a tradition identifying that
city with the Tower of Babel of Genesis 11:4. (2) Carchemish. Few cities of
the ancient world occupied a more prominent position than this. Its name has
been explained as meaning the Tower of Chemosh, and so bears witness to the
widespread cultus of the deity whom we meet with in Biblical history as the
“abomination of the Moabites” (1 Kings 11:7)”.
Some have even associated the god Chemosh with Ham himself, the son of
Noah.
|
This switches the land of the Tower of Babel away from Sumer to the
vicinity of Carchemish.
The name, Carchemish, including apparently the meaning of “Tower”, may
indicate that this is where the attempted building of the Tower of Babel had
been undertaken.
It could not have been in the well-known Babylon of Sumer, which city was
begun much later.
Any map of Mesopotamia will show that - whether one believes Noah’s Ark to
have landed on Mt. Çudi (Judi) in Kurdistan, or Mt. Ararat in Turkey - ancient
Babylon is hundreds of kilometers directly south of both of these places.
Various authors have pointed this out. “This somewhat inconvenient geographical
fact (for those who believe that the people migrated eastward or westward) is
downplayed by those who believe that the Tower was built at the city of
Babylon, and requires inventing scenarios that move the people far enough south
while still satisfying their perception of this Scripture”. (Anne Habermehl’s
article)
Sadly, the location of other cities connected with Nimrod in this same
Genesis verse (10:10): “The beginning of [Nimrod’s] kingdom was Babel and Erech
and Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar”, is also a matter of dispute. Some
translations even get rid of “Calneh” altogether, by substituting “all of these
[i.e., Babel, Erech and Accad] in the land of Shinar”.
Another point in Habermehl’s favour, I think, is that her choice of Sinjar
(Shinjar) for “Shinar” is far more linguistically plausible than is “Sumer”.
Scholars and historians have been totally confounded by the abrupt rise of
the Sumerian culture nearly 6,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent of the
Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. This “sudden civilisation” seemed to appear out of
thin air and refused to conform to the popular historical theory of linear development
in cultural evolution.
Historian Professor Charles Hapgood squarely faces the issue when he writes
that “today we find primitive cultures co-existing with advanced modern society
on all continents… We shall now assume that 20,000 years ago while paleolithic
peoples held out in Europe, more advanced cultures existed elsewhere on earth.”
Likewise the rise of Sumeria has been a major puzzle.
Joseph Campbell in The Masks of God writes, “With stunning abruptness…
there appears in this little Sumerian mud garden… the whole cultural syndrome
that has since constituted the germinal unit of all high civilisations of the
world.”
William Irwin Thompson puts it even more succinctly. “Sumer is a poor
stoneless place for a neolithic culture to evolve from a peasant community into
a full-blown civilisation,” he writes, “but it is a very good place to turn the
plains and marshes into irrigated farmlands … In short, Sumer is an ideal place
to locate a culture already having the technology necessary for urban life and
irrigation agriculture.”
This would indicate that human settlement of Sumer, and the cities and
culture that developed from this, had occurred somewhat later than was formerly
believed.
There is to be considered the possibility that pre-Flood Cain-ites had
settled there and that, after the Flood, when Sumer was re-settled, Cain-ite
names were re-applied to the cities that now sprang up there. My earlier view
had been, in line with others, that cities named after the Cain-ites (Enoch,
Irad, Tubal-cain) were identifiable in the names of southern Mesopotamia
cities. According to: http://xenohistorian.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/the-babylonian-connection-
David Rohl has
proposed that both Uruk and Ur were named after Enoch, because their actual
Sumerian names were Unuk and Unuki, respectively. Rohl goes on to see a
connection between Bad-tibira and Tubal-Cain, because Bad-tibira means “City of
the Metal Worker.” Finally, Eridu, which archaeologists and Sumerian historians
believe is the oldest city of all, could have been named after Irad (according
to Rohl) or Jared (according to Zecharia Sitchin).
Cain himself, though, as traditions seem to indicate, settled on the edge
of “Seth’s land”. According to what we learned earlier, Cain had not moved far
from the vicinity of the Garden of Eden.
As already touched upon, NE Syria is also more geographically proximate
(than is Sumer) for the descendants of Noah from my point of view (Habermehl is
obviously a global Floodist), according to which Noah’s Ark landed upon the
mountains of modern Kurdistan (ancient Urartu). It might be expected, then,
that humankind would soon find its way into the fertile Khabur region. That this
region qualifies as a “plain” is apparent from Habermehl’s description of it
(she includes a photograph):
“It is difficult to tell from what we know of history exactly where the
boundaries of the entire land of Shinar were; indeed, those boundaries may not
even have remained precisely the same at different times. However, we will
generally describe Shinar as a land including the territory that is located
immediately south of the Turkish mountains between the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers. This area is almost perfectly flat as far as the eye can see (fig. 2).
It surely qualifies as “a plain in the land of Shinar,” as Genesis calls it”.
There is yet another most useful upside to Habermehl’s reconstruction; one
that she herself has pointed out, and it is not favourable to the documentary
theory: “One result of “moving” Babel from south Mesopotamia to the north of
Syria is that secular historians will no longer be able to claim that the
building of the Tower was merely a story inspired by the ziggurat at Babylon
(for example, Parrot 1955, p. 17)”.
In fact, with the early Genesis scene shifted right away from Babylonia,
then those old arguments according to which the Book of Genesis (e.g., the
Flood) had borrowed from Mesopotamian lore will no longer carry any force.
It is well known where the ancient city of Babylon stood. But - and as
Habermehl strongly - argues, Babylon and the “Babel” of Genesis 10:10 are not
necessarily synonymous.
Habermehl herself does not actually identify the location of Babel. She
presumes that it must lie at the approximate centre of the triangle of cities
that she has associated with Genesis 10:10.
But might not the LXX be telling us, by substituting the name “Babylon” for
“Carchemish”, that the impressive site of Carchemish (modern Jerablus) was
itself a Babylon, a Babel? – perhaps in close association with Calneh – in the
very region “where the Tower was built”?
One unusual French scholar, Fernand Crombette, whose unique and complicated
method of translating ancient texts with the aid of Coptic has bemused many,
had claimed that Carchemish was where Noah and his sons lived after the Flood,
and that its modern name, Jerablus, actually translates as The Naked Man (L‘homme nu), referring to the incident
of the drunken Noah (Genesis 9:20-25). Given that the region of Carchemish may
have been the suitable place for grape vines: “In Mesopotamia,
grapevines could be nurtured only in the north, notably in the region of
Carchemish” (P. King, Life in Biblical Israel, p. 98), then Crombette
may have got this right. Northern Syria might have been, for this very reason,
the first place of choice for migrations after the Flood waters had begun to
subside.
That does not necessitate, however, that all human groups, post-Flood, had
converged upon the fertile “plain in the land of Shinar”.
Carchemish, once excavated by the famed adventurer, T. E. Lawrence
(“Lawrence of Arabia”), but now currently situated on the boundaries of a war
zone, awaits a fuller archaeological effort. “Nicolò
Marchetti of Bologna University, who leads the renewed investigations with a
joint Italian-Turkish team beginning in 2011, says that, despite the
city's historical significance, only 5 percent of the site has been excavated”.
I personally should be most interested to find whether further excavational
work at the site of Jerablus (Carchemish), or its environs, might yield any
evidence of the famous Tower of Babel.
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